Recent advances in hardware and software have permitted an increased awareness and development effort in the area of interactive "synthesized" environments. The goal of these development efforts is to provide a synthesized environment which is so realistic as to be virtually indistinguishable from the "absolute" or actual reality. The applications of these interactive synthesized realities are diverse: flight simulation, preconstruction architectural review and walkthrough, videogame-like entertainment, molecular modeling and engineering, microsurgery, communications and educational applications.
The NASA Ames Research Center has been working in synthetic environment development for many years. NASA's Virtual Interface Environment Workstation (VIEW) uses a head-mounted black and white LCD display for communicating generated three dimensional images to the system user.
Another system developer is VPL Research. VPL Research has designed a DataGlove which employs fiberoptics to monitor flexion and extension of the user's fingers, and a Polhemus magnetic tracking device to position the user's hand in a three dimensional matrix. VPL Research provides a DataSuit which expands the technology used in the DataGlove to monitor movement of the entire human body. VPL Research's EyePhone, or visual input device, consists of two color LCD monitors viewed through an optics system. In VPL Research's system, each monitor is driven by a separate computing path. A high resolution dot pattern is then superimposed over the transmitted image to improve perceived resolution. VPL Research provides a DataSuit which expands the technology used in the DataGlove to monitor movement of the entire human body.
AutoDesk has recently announced its development efforts in computer-generated synthetic reality systems. AutoDesk is primarily interested in architectural walkthrough applications of computer-generated synthetic environments, as a natural companion to AutoDesk's well established position in the CAD industry.
TiNi Alloy Co. has announced a tactile array of tiny, electronically activated pins to simulate the sensation of touching shapes and forms.
These existing systems fail to provide a totally integrated sensory output, to capture photo realistic images, sound and tactile sensory stimuli in a single interactive time and space. The processing technology in these earlier systems permits only gross "computational" image representations, images which are not realistic because of computation-limited low polygon density. The system architectures are inherently inefficient, preventing the provided system storage and processing capacity from operating at the computational speed required to provide super-realistic visual, sound and tactile imagery in an interactive mode.
The present invention provides a fully integrated system with massive parallel processing capabilities for generating and processing super realistic visual images, multidimensional sound images and tactile output. The present system permits the incorporation of pre-existing (actual) realities, defined herein as "absolute" reality, in combination with the computer-generated "synthetic" environments. The present invention is able to accomplish these features by providing a system architecture which optimizes computer memory storage and retrieval and which enables the required computations with a minimum of compute server capacity.
It is an object of this invention to provide a unique combination of system architecture, computer-generated environmental output signals and computer output-human sensory input interfaces which provides the system user with a super realistic experience when interacting with the system.
It is an object of this invention to generate synthetic and absolute environmental model output of super realistic visual images, multidimensional sound images and interactive tactile output.
It is another object of this invention to provide data storage and retrieval architecture which employs image and data buffers to permit rapid access to stored data and unlimited capacity for increasing the speed of data retrieval and the data base volume.
It is an object of this invention to provide system architecture which permits efficient use of data memory and retrieval means by rapid reconfiguration of stored and currently viewed images.
It is an object of this invention to provide a system which can effectively combine "absolute" realities with "synthetic" realities to provide remote system operation capabilities, including remote robotics.
It is an object of this invention to monitor user position, movement and health telemetry data without intrusive sensors and cumbersome umbilical cords.
It is an object of this invention to provide generated and processed environment modeling module output to the user's biological sensory interfaces through massive micro compute server parallel data processing techniques.
It is an object of this invention to employ an environment modeling module in which three dimensional visual output is optically differentiated to obtain stereographic images using a single output mode.
It is an object of this invention to provide an environment modeling module which incorporates as pre-selected parameters the natural and known laws of physics in the generation of synthetic and absolute environments.
These and further objects of the present invention will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art with reference to the following description and figures.